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There has been a lot of back and forth in various threads about what defines a documentary. Many are sticking to the definition found in many dictionaries where a documentary is defined as "A film or television or radio program that gives factual information about a subject."
This definition has obvious problems. Using this definition, James Cameron's "Titanic" is a documentary.
Here?s another dictionary?s definition: "A non-fiction narrative without actors. Typically, a documentary is a journalistic record of an event, person or place."
This is helpful, but doesn?t really get us there. Errol Morris' "The Thin Blue Line" has actors and re-creations. The TV series, "Cops" does, as do many of the historical programs on A&E, The History Channel and The Learning Channel.
Another definition is based on what the audience thinks it is seeing: "A film that is perceived as signifying what it appears to record."
Clearly the boundaries of what defines a documentary are elusive. Perhaps the genre is best defined by that old maxim, "I can?t tell you what it is, but I know it when I see it." For our purposes, documentary is defined in its broadest form. It includes news, informational programs, "reality" programs, instructional and how-to programs and anything that more or less fits under the umbrella non-fiction.
As you can see a strict definition of the word just does not work. I draw on this example only to underscore that people who are upset by filmmakers who win awards for films that are not documentaries by the strictest of definitions. The definition is not that strict.
Argue about content but the definition of documentary? Time to movve on to something worth of your argumentative sweat.